Wesley wasn’t quite sure what the problem was and why everyone seemed to have such an aversion to bow ties and purple velvet. He thought it was rather fitting, since purple meant royalty and meeting a Doyen was as close as anyone in the new world could get. Besides, it made far more of an impression than the large four-bladed sword that Arjun had strapped around his shoulder.

“The day I take fashion advice from you is the day I really do go insane,” Wesley said.

“You are already insane, underboss.”

“Says the man carrying his sword to a diplomatic meeting.”

Arjun adjusted the strap that kept the blade close to his back. “It was a gift,” he said.

And the unspoken words that hung on the end of that sentence were so clearly from Asees. Wesley could tell by the way Arjun hadn’t let the sword out of his sight since he’d returned. The warrior had always been a bit too attached to the weapon, but even Wesley had noticed the extra care he took when sharpening or polishing the blade. How he wore it day and night, no matter the occasion.

This was grief, a kind Wesley had never experienced. A kind he hoped he’d never have to.

“Just try not to decapitate Schulze before she signs over her army to us,” he said. “I think it would make a bad impression.”

“You really think she’ll go for an alliance?” Tavia asked, slouching back in her chair to kick her feet up on the table. “Your oh-so-charming bow tie aside, she’s still meeting with a bunch of buskers and Crafters. Considering all of her anti–black magic campaigning, I’d think the last thing she’d want to do was team up with people like us.”

Wesley adjusted his bow tie. Played with the newly polished cuff links on his sleeves. He hadn’t felt so anxious in a while, or so desperate to hide any doubts in his eyes.

“You’d be surprised what people agree to when their life is on the line,” he said.

“Like meeting an underboss and a busker who she would’ve thrown in jail just a few months ago,” Saxony said, with a pointed glance at Tavia.

“Or a group of Crafters, when Ashwood’s army is littered with them,” Tavia shot back.

Wesley wasn’t in the mood for more of their sniping and he definitely wasn’t in the mood to ask either of them about their problems. But Doyen Fenna Schulze had to see them as a united front, because trusting an underboss and his new Crafter friends was one thing, but trusting a fractured army who couldn’t even seem to trust each other was even riskier. It was something only somebody very stupid would do.

And Schulze wasn’t stupid.